Future of the Forum - Poll

[RED]

you could get ride of the SECOND AMENDMENT AND POLITICS FORUM. most of the threads started on there are rable rousing designed to stir up trouble.

And you would lose a lot of people and most of the contributors.

[dave]

I am partial to small bore, Krag , Japanese and Mauser sites. However they are very slow with new posts. So why not just have them post in gun talk?, or create a military rifle forum. That would be 3-4 forums gone. Perhaps shut down 'New Posts', after all they are just repeats from other forums, altho convenient. Get rid of old posts, I would not suggest a time frame, I never go back to search, I copy if interesting when I see it, which is seldom. Keep politics in its forum, do not allow in gun talk, or get rid of political forum.

[Dick Hosmer]

For what it is worth, here is a current snapshot of forum "popularity".


49,769 2A/Politics
36,349 Gun Talk
17,371 M1903
6,517 Krag
5,599 M1 Garand
5,585 Sniper
5,439 M1911
4,231 Reloading
3,845 Trapdoor
3,795 Sale/Wanted
3,310 M1 Carbine
3,289 Mauser
2,615 SMLE
2,505 Knife
2,181 Shotgun
2,087 Smallbore
2,056 Service
1,795 Militaria
1,678 M1917
1,375 Firing Line
1,229 Revolvers
1,151 M16
1,142 Ammo
1,066 Japanese
855 Black Powder
726 Books
444 Soviet
398 Optics
289 Maj. Culver
241 Welcome
166 Stolen
53 Admin
5 Event

Some questions:

Is there a practical way to archive deleted material, to get it off the allocated (paid) space? In these days of thumbdrives a Gb is nothing.
Since "delete" seems to be winning by a large margin, are we going to delete entire forums, or purge older posts?

[SysAd]

Looking at the numbers, I am in hopes that we can achieve the 20% reduction by cutting back Politics and Gun Talk. There is very little to be gained by deleting the small forums unless there are massive numbers of pictures in them. I won't make the announcement till the poll closes on 10/26 but we are leaning to cutting posts. I don't know of a way for you to save individual posts except to open them, select and copy the content and paste it into a text file or word document. We might want to put more valuable gun information into the smaller forums so that Gun Talk is primarily chit chat, which will be less painful for future deletions.

[John]

The real long term value is in the gun posts with info hard to find elsewhere.
Quite often these posts will be found from a Google search, not searching from this site.

The least long term value is in the chit chat and political areas. Nice to exchange pleasantries, views and outrage with friends, but value after 30, 60, 90 days drops to almost zero in most cases. These are also this highest volume content just by number of posts, and likely to achieve a significant storage reduction if time limited.

If someone wanted to donate to help buy more storage is there a PayPal or similar method we can use?

[SysAd]

The real long term value is in the gun posts with info hard to find elsewhere.
Quite often these posts will be found from a Google search, not searching from this site.

The least long term value is in the chit chat and political areas. Nice to exchange pleasantries, views and outrage with friends, but value after 30, 60, 90 days drops to almost zero in most cases. These are also this highest volume content just by number of posts, and likely to achieve a significant storage reduction if time limited.

If someone wanted to donate to help buy more storage is there a PayPal or similar method we can use?

There is a PayPal link on the donate tab, but until this all shakes out, I won't know whether there will be enough to upgrade the storage. It's pretty much an all or nothing deal with an annual repeat. Certainly, the gun posts will be preserved if we can cut enough elsewhere.

[Dick Hosmer]

Is there any "overhead" consumed by having many forums? If there is, I could certainly suggest a few consolidations.

[SysAd]

No, the number of forums isn't an issue, just the just the number of actual posts and pictures.

[dryheat]

But, to clean up the site some, a few forums could go. Aw, but that would surely end up in an argument.

[Jeff L]

I think most of the posts on Gun Talk and 2nd Amend can be deleted after 60 days. If I see posts on Gun Talk that belongs in a specific forum, I try to move them. My 2 cents.

[free1954]

I think most of the posts on Gun Talk and 2nd Amend can be deleted after 60 days. If I see posts on Gun Talk that belongs in a specific forum, I try to move them. My 2 cents.

delete anything that starts out with HILLARY SAID or OBUMMER DID. right from the start. most of the stuff posted over on the 2ND AMEND. is just posted to stir up anger. who cares who kneels or what people like WILSON have to say.

[phil441]

I'm with Jeff on this...

[JB White]

I'm with Jeff on this...

I would say if a thread hasn't been hit in 60 days then adios. Put an automatic expiration date after a year. It not as though we need an archive on the chatter boards. The gun related boards..as mentioned those turn up on a search engine. I'm sure we've picked up a few new contributors who have found us by going that route.

Bottom line is there is no quick clean answer, but deletions are needed.

[tmark]

I think any posts that show hostility, anger, argument, belittling, prejudice, disrespect, name-calling, etc. should automatically be deleted.

[dryheat]

That's not the point of this thread.